Beautiful in its Time

Oh me. What a day. It has been rough...to say the least. I feel small and weak, helpless and needy. My flesh tells me that I need to curl up in bed and just cry it all out. My mind says I have a right to disregard everything else around me in order to allow myself the freedom to just be sad. I know it isn't wrong to cry. It isn't. Crying helps a lot of the time. What I want to do however isn't a healthy way of expressing or releasing emotions. I want to escape everything and sit in my darkness and listen to all my fear and anxiety. I want to be alone with these things that are not of God.

I can hear Christ calling. I can see Him there, sadly but gently beckoning me to draw close to Him. He doesn't want me to hide away in the arms of self-pity or unhappiness. He wants me to lift my chin and smile. He wants me to lift my hands to heaven. He wants me to run from my darkness into His marvelous light. He wants me to crawl out of bed and open the shades and let the sun and beauty shine in. He wants me to don my armor and battle against the negative. He wants me to rise again and say, "Oh Lord, You are always good." He wants me to stretch my fledgling wings so that one day I might fly.

                                       (Photo taken by me at Lake Michigan in September)

The last thing our Lord wants is for us to shut ourselves up. He doesn't want  the cares of this world to make us turn away from Him. We need Him always, but seemingly the most when going though troubles. Please don't think that this issue, this lost job, this failing business venture, this rebellious child, this dying father, this health problem, this anything...(you name it) is going to change who you are in Christ.

Don't start to drift away from Him because of problems in your life. Come close and hang on tight, because He is holding onto you. Stand at the shores of His peace and in the waves of his grace. Remember who you are in Him, not in this world.

You are His.

I am His. Because of this fact, I refuse to give in to my flesh. I am not going to go and crawl into bed and pity myself for the bad day I have had. I am not going to shut out His light.

 I am going to bask in His glory and comfort and grace. I am going to listen to His truths whispered in my ear through scripture:

 ^"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." 

Ecclesiastes 3:11